One bad apple does not necessarily spoil the whole bunch

The Police, especially the higher echelons within the corps, have, of late, been receiving a lot of bad press from both the local and foreign media in connection with the latest revelations from the never-ending saga of the Bidnija car bomb explosion. As if this weren’t bad enough, we have also read about a former assistant commissioner whose alcoholism was a contributing factor in his multiple brushes with the Law he once swore to uphold. We also read about a young constable, not long on the Force who was charged with raping a female colleague and police officers at Malta International Airport accepting bribes to allow foreigners entry to our country who otherwise would have absolutely no right to live and work here. The list is of course much longer. Such behaviour makes one wonder why certain persons decide to join the forces of law and order in the first place.

On the evening of Wednesday, 11 April, a desperado smashed the quarter window of my son’s parked car and grabbed his knapsack containing a laptop which had cost him an arm and a leg. Thanks to its inbuilt tracking device however, he managed to identify the laptop’s location and pass on the information to the police. The three of us couldn’t believe our ears when, the following day, less than 24 hours after the crime was committed, a phone call from the female inspector in charge of the case informed us that not only had they managed to apprehend the culprit but also retrieve the laptop! Our boy took possession of it on Saturday 21 April, just 10 days after it was so callously taken away from him. I must now empathise with all those victims of crime whose story did not have a similar happy conclusion or whose experience of dealing with the police left a bitter taste in their mouth. Yet if one wants to bear witness to the truth, one cannot succumb to the temptation of generalising, making sweeping statements or tarring everyone with the same brush, no matter which category of people is in the spotlight.

Therefore, the aim of this letter is to laud those police officers who are a credit to their profession, despite the odds often stacked against them. To say that theirs is a difficult, stressful and often thankless occupation is perhaps to make the understatement of the year. For some of them, risking life and limb at the hands of violent criminals is not that rare an occurrence. For the rest, unsociable working hours away from their loved ones, having to turn up at the Law Courts on what are supposed to be their days off, finding the right way, if it exists, to tell parents that their son or daughter is dead, confronting unsavoury characters and the many slaves to substance abuse is all par for the course. Ah! I forgot to mention political interference, Maltese style. In passing, I wonder how many of your readers know that certain police officers even go the extra mile and transport homeless persons to shelters in their squad cars when the latter do not have enough money in their pockets to pay for the bus fare, let alone a taxi.

Inspector Priscilla, P.S. 728 and your colleagues together with the officers on duty at the Valletta and Hamrun stations at the time, what else can I say (and on behalf of my wife and son), except “Thank you for doing such a good job”?

Martin Bugeja Balzan